Every couple of years computer hardware shifts up a gear and the next shift is about to arrive. New motherboards, new processors and a new RAM format could see performance increases of 50% or more.
September will see the release of a new generation of PC hardware that could improve the performance of high-end systems by a huge amount. This new hardware will be expensive at first, but for power-hungry gamers and multimedia professionals the performance gains should be well worth it.
New Motherboards
September sees the release of Intels new X99 chipset and there will be a flurry of Motherboards based around it from Intel, MSI, EVGA and other manufacturers. The X99 or "Wellsburg" family of chipsets support new processors, faster RAM, more USB3 ports and a new version of SATA, SATA Express, which will allow access to a new generation of SSD drives at speeds of 10Gbps, 67% faster than SATA 3.0
New Processors
The new processors from Intel are the Haswell-E family (that's E for Enthusiast) The first three chips should be available in September and they will come in 6 and 8 core variants with clock speeds of 3 to 3.7Ghz and up to 20MB of on board cache. With quad channel memory controllers, 40 lanes of PCI-express 3.0 and support for Hyperthreading this will give up to 16 cores from a single processor and massively increased throughput to the memory and graphics cards.
New RAM
The other new development is DDR4 RAM. As the name suggests this is the successor to DDR3 and it will offer faster clock speeds and larger modules but at the same time a reduction in voltage and power consumption. DDR4 RAM will be capable of up to twice the speed of DDR3 RAM.
Corsair are already marketing their DDR4 RAM which will be known as Vengeance LPX and Dominator Platinum. Available in 4GB and 8GB modules at first there should be 16GB modules in the future allowing up to 128GB in total. See the press release on the next page for more details.
What will it cost?
As usual the first generation of the new hardware will be expensive, motherboards at $999 and processors for over $1000 have been seen whilst the new DDR4 RAM will be 50-60% more expensive than DDR3, but prices will fall and more affordable versions of the hardware will be released. In the meantime, if you want the fastest PC that money can buy, September is looking like a good time to upgrade.
Read Corsair's press release about their new DDR4 memory after the break

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